Janina White
25 Oct 2023
In the current landscape of digitization, lawyers have unprecedented tools at their disposal. Two such disciplines—digital forensics and stylometry—have emerged as invaluable assets. These tools, distinct yet occasionally interrelated, provide attorneys with insights into digital footprints and the authorship of contested content, furthering their pursuit of justice.
Digital Forensics: A Lawyer's Digital Detective
Definition and Scope
Digital forensics involves recovering and analyzing digital data. For lawyers, it aids in gathering digital evidence, crucial for many legal cases, especially those rooted in electronic exchanges or crimes.
Relevance to Legal Cases
Lawyers can leverage a client's or opponent's digital footprint to gather evidence or establish patterns:
News and Internet Activity: Scrutinizing online behaviors, comments, or engagement that might be pertinent to a case.
Business and Finance: Examining financial discrepancies, unauthorized transactions, or evidence of fraud.
Real Estate: Assessing property disputes or illegal transactions.
Documents: Retrieving critical digital documents that may serve as evidence.
Family Details: In cases like custody battles, digital interactions and shared content can be revealing.
Accounts: Uncovering hidden assets or unauthorized access incidents.
Habits and Location: Demonstrating a person's whereabouts or behaviors that might be relevant to legal claims.
Gadgets: Device data can be vital in cases of electronic fraud, harassment, or other cybercrimes.
Legal Issues: Digital evidence can be pivotal in establishing a history of legal violations.
OSINT (Open-source Intelligence)
Lawyers can use OSINT to gather information about parties involved in a case from publicly available sources.
It can bolster the attorney's background checks or provide context to existing evidence.
Stylometry: Determining Authorship in Legal Scenarios
Stylometry studies linguistic patterns in written content, aiding lawyers in determining the true authorship of contested or anonymous documents.
How it benefits lawyers:
Examining linguistic nuances in written contracts, wills, or anonymous letters related to a case.
Challenging or validating the authenticity of a piece of evidence based on its linguistic style.
Identifying potential authors of defamatory online content or anonymous threats.
When Digital Forensics and Stylometry Converge for Lawyers
In specific cases, a lawyer might require the combined strengths of both disciplines:
Retrieving a digital document through digital forensics and then using stylometry to verify its authorship.
In the realm of cybercrimes or intellectual property disputes, both the source of the content and its author can be of paramount importance.
Summary
For the modern lawyer, mastering digital forensics and stylometry isn't just advantageous—it's essential. While digital forensics opens doors to a vast repository of digital evidence, stylometry ensures the authenticity of written content. In a world where digital interactions are increasingly integral to legal proceedings, these tools empower lawyers to navigate cases with enhanced clarity and precision.
Janina is a solicitor registered in England and Wales, and the Republic of Ireland, and a member of the American Bar Association. Her extensive legal expertise spans Corporate Law, Sanctions, and Corporate Governance. Beyond law, Janina is a Chartered Company Secretary and showcases a passion for global cultures, evident in her fluency in eight languages. Advising multinational giants, her unique blend of legal acumen and cultural insight sets her apart, offering readers a rich, global perspective on her subjects. Janina is also a private investigator and a member of the Association of British Investigators and she is actively using the investigative techniques (including the use of the Artificial Intelligence, OSINT and HUMINT) in her legal work.